The Sin Maker got to his feet slowly, bringing himself to his full height as he faced me. ‘Have you ever been in love, daughter of Bahadur?’ I was suddenly keenly aware of the rope around my waist, stretching through solid stone back to Jin’s hand. I didn’t answer. ‘Is there anything you wouldn’t do to save them if you could?’
I was still silent. This time I really didn’t know the answer. I would take a bullet to hold on to Jin; I had once, and I had a scar to prove it. But the Sin Maker would have doomed the whole world for the First Hero. I didn’t know if I was selfish enough to doom the whole world for Jin. I didn’t know that I was selfless enough not to.
‘No,’ he said finally, watching me struggle. ‘I’m not sorry.’
‘How would you like to be freed anyway?’
I had the satisfaction of catching him off guard. The Sin Maker tilted his head to the side just a little. ‘And why would a daughter of Bahadur the noble do that?’ he asked warily.
I ran my tongue across my dry lips before finally settling on the part of the truth I wanted to tell. ‘There are some people I care about, and there’s a good chance they’ll die if I don’t get to them soon. I want to save them.’ Like you wanted to save her. It hung unsaid between us.
‘So it’s a trade you want? My help for my freedom?’
‘Something like that.’ I could already see him burning a little brighter. But for once, I had the advantage on him. I might not have been alive as long as he had, but I had lived in the world with mortality a whole lot longer. And I knew centuries of stories about making deals with Djinn. Only the gifts given willingly by Djinn ever brought good. The rest – cheated or bargained out of them – brought ruin. One misplaced word brought disaster instead of fortune. One slippery, undefined turn of phrase left all the room the Djinn needed for us slower, stupider mortals to slip off the edge.
The Sin Maker hated me. I could see it written all over him. He hated me because I was mortal, because I existed through the sacrifice of a hero he had loved long, long ago. And I was the child of one who had chained him up. He wouldn’t give me anything willingly. Not even in exchange for his freedom after centuries. And if he tried, I couldn’t win. I couldn’t outsmart him. ‘You’re thinking that you’ll trick me,’ I said, stilling the thoughts roiling in his mind. ‘That I’ll try to bind you to me, to give you orders. But I don’t want to do that.’
‘What do you want then, daughter of Bahadur?’
‘I don’t want to fight you.’ I wanted to rest. I was tired. I was wrung dry by this war. By leading. By everything. ‘I don’t want to play games where I weigh every word I say to check for loose footing and you prod at them to find the cracks to slip through. So here’s my offer: I want you to agree to do what I want.’
What I wanted was different from what I asked for. I might ask for our friends to be freed, but what I wanted was them alive, in one piece, not freed through death. I might want a way through Ashra’s Wall, but I didn’t want to release the Destroyer of Worlds, if she really was trapped behind it. I was asking him to agree not to the letter of my orders but the heart of them. ‘I want help,’ I said finally.
‘Help?’ The Sin Maker sounded interested.
‘Yes, agree to my terms and I will free you from this cave now, and from servitude to me when it is done.’
‘You drive a hard bargain.’ He was watching the match in my fingers burn down. ‘That’s your last match.’
‘It is,’ I said. ‘And it’ll be my last offer, too. I can leave here without you. But you can’t leave here without me.’
‘Then I agree,’ the Sin Maker said simply.
‘Say it.’
‘Amani Al-Bahadur.’ His tone wasn’t without sarcasm, but it was his words that mattered. ‘Your wish will be my command. I will honour what you want in exchange for my freedom from here. And eventually from you.’
I turned it over carefully. But he was right, we were running out of time. It was my last match. ‘Tell me your name,’ I said.
‘My name.’ It was my first want, my first order. I saw his jaw work, like it was unused to the word that was coming forwards. ‘It was given to me a very long time ago. My name is Zaahir.’
‘Zaahir, the Sin Maker,’ I repeated. And then I saw the rest of the words, the ones that had been carved into the arch above the door, which Tamid had read off for me. I spoke them out loud, carefully, painstakingly, ending with his name.
I finished almost breathless. Waiting for something to happen. For the circle around him to break, maybe. Or for his chains to shatter. A flash of light or fire. Or a clap of thunder to shake the mountain.
But all that happened was that Zaahir smiled at me as the flame of the match reached my fingers, close to extinguishing. The last thing I saw was him stepping over the line of the circle before the match died, plunging us both into darkness.
Chapter 24
‘Well, daughter of Bahadur.’ A new light bloomed just enough so that I could see him, free of his prison, standing suddenly too close to me. The fire wasn’t flickering across his face, I realised. It was coming from within it, a faint glow betraying that he was not quite human. ‘What is it that you want now?’
The sensation of power rushed in, as if to consume me. I wanted so much. I wanted the Sultan to die for what he had done to Shira, to Imin and to Hala. I wanted to win this war for their sakes and the sakes of everyone else who had died for it. I wanted Ahmed to sit on the throne and rule it in the name of its own people instead of some foreign power. But I knew better than to ask for something that big and imprecise. I wasn’t stupid. I’d heard stories of Djinn deception.
‘I want you to take me to Eremot.’
The Sin Maker didn’t answer me. He just smiled.
And then the mountain began to move. He didn’t raise his hands like I needed to when I moved the desert. He didn’t strain, didn’t so much as blink, as earth and rocks that had remained unmoved for centuries shifted, like a behemoth awaking from a long sleep and stretching its colossal body.
A split in the mountain appeared, a tunnel. Not leading back towards the ruins of Sazi and the cave where the others awaited, but deeper into the maw of the mountain. He’d just cleaved a mountain, effortlessly.
Only then did real understanding descend on me.
This was an immortal being, a maker of humans. His power was cosmic and beyond my understanding. He could move mountains and shake the earth. He didn’t care anything for the wars of men. He hadn’t ever lived in our world. He was from legends, not reality.
And I’d just gone and set him free.
The Sin Maker extended one hand straight down the tunnel. ‘After you.’
I glanced at the wall that led back to the others.